FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT TONY STEWART - PAGE 2

Tony Stewart has no forgiveness in his heart for Goodyear. Nationwide victory or not. Stewart won the Camping World 300 on Saturday, holding off the always aggressive Kyle Busch on the final lap for the thrilling victory. But tire talk was the big topic of conversation after what happened earlier in the day. Stewart-Haas teammate Ryan Newman blew a tire in the final practice for Sunday's Daytona 500, causing him to wreck into Stewart. Both drivers must use backup cars for the race.

It cost Tony Stewart nothing. That is how highly Haas CNC Racing regards him. It so wanted his skill, star power, bravura and passion that it gave him a 50 percent interest in the team, which will begin running next season under the banner of Stewart Haas Racing. "The opportunity to have ownership in a race team was ... a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," Stewart said Thursday at a news conference at Chicagoland Speedway. "I don't think an offer like this has ever been made in this series to a driver and I don't think that an offer of this magnitude will be offered [again]

Some of the best in the business are going dirt-tracking Wednesday night at Eldora Speedway in Ohio. Tony Stewart is set to host his seventh-annual "Prelude to the Dream" event that supports four of the nation's top children's hospitals. The pay-per-view event has attracted five NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champions representing a total of 10 Sprint Cup titles: Bill Elliott (1988), Bobby Labonte (2000), Stewart (2002, 2005), Matt Kenseth (2003) and Jimmie Johnson (2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010)

Back home again in Indiana during the holidays, Tony Stewart went to shoot pool with some old friends. "Three people came up and said, `We don't like you,'" he recalls. And this was on the friendliest turf Stewart could hope for, in a local pub in his hometown of Columbus. "They were pretty clear about what they thought," Stewart says. It was straightforward, face-to-face, just as Stewart likes it. "Real easy," he says of the problem and the solution. "I started laughing, and that kind of made them mad."

The presentation went off with all the pomp of a presidential appearance. The studio was standing-room only. The TV platform was filled with more than a dozen cameras. The music throbbed and, most tellingly, the festivities started a good half-hour late. The centerpiece of the moment was Tony Stewart, who just two weeks ago in Joliet announced that next year he would drive for and have an ownership stake in Stewart Haas Racing. The occasion was to announce his car would be a Chevrolet, that his number would be 14 and that his co-primary sponsors would be Office Depot and Old Spice.

It has been an incredible run for Tony Stewart , who has risen from the ranks of a competitive afterthought to the driver to beat in the Chase for the Championship. Two victories in two weeks has much to do with that. "It's huge," Stewart said after winning at Loudon, N.H., on Sunday after Clint Bowyer ran out of gas on the final lap. "When you talk about momentum, that race car doesn't know anything about momentum. It knows what you put in it, it knows how we drive it. It doesn't know stats, it doesn't know anything other than just what's put in it. "Momentum deals with people.

Tony Stewart's tempests have subsided, now that he's back home again in Indiana. But this weekend, all bets on his new serenity are off. There have been no rages at the racetracks since Stewart, 34, moved from the teeming, maddening NASCAR epicenter north of Charlotte back to little Columbus, Ind., last November. "Just being back home," he says, has eased his mind all around, even on the grueling Nextel Cup tour. "I'm in the same house I was raised in, from the time I was 10 months old," he says.

In stalked Kyle Busch, cap tugged low and wraparound shades still cinched on despite having been indoors for a good 100 feet. His black T-shirt was faded. His demeanor -- an eternally entertaining potpourri of disgust and honesty and sarcastic indifference -- was not nearly as washed out. The man sitting eighth in the NASCAR Sprint Cup standings, and the winner of both the Nationwide and Cup races at Chicagoland Speedway last year, labeled his 2009 results a "failure" and "pathetic."

When Tony Stewart hopped into his No. 20 Home Depot Pontiac and began racing in Sunday's Tropicana 400 at Chicagoland Speedway, it was time for the members of his team to take a break and let the celebrity driver shoulder some of the load. Their work began at 8 a.m. Sunday when the garages opened. At that hour--the various crews started filtering into the pit area around 7:15--the adjustments that were being made could be the difference between winning and washing out. "If you don't do your job here, you're not going to finish," Stewart crew member Brian Larson said.

AUTO RACING Jeff Gordon held on against Tony Stewart, who still grabbed a 15-point lead over third-place finisher Jimmie Johnson in NASCAR's Chase for the Nextel Cup on Sunday at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway.